The Saga of the M16 in Vietnam (part 1) - Culver's Shooting Page

the "ding toolies" that it was necessary to pipe in air and sunlight. Mike and I had become the
"pariahs" in the Marine Corps in general, and the 3 rd Marine Division in particular. However...
At long last people started doing something overt for a change. We were pulling an
operation down in the 1 st Marine Division AO, south of Da Nang (AO stands for "area of
operations") – the SLF was essentially a "hired gun" and went wherever there was hate and
discontent). The Corps "flew-in" a C-130 with 400 brand new XM16E1 rifles along with a
Marine Warrant Officer considered to be an expert in the small arms ordnance field. The
ordnance Warrant was an old friend of mine who had been the Marine Representative to
Cadillac Gauge when they were building the "Stoner 63" System. He had been a Staff
Sergeant at the time and we used to sit on my living room floor and disassemble the Stoner
System over an occasional beer (well, maybe several beers) when the Marine Corps was
running its Stoner tests in at Camp Lejeune. Now, I tell myself, we’ll get some results, Bob is
a pretty savvy guy! ...Wrong again "gopher breath"! – Bob Baker (the Marine Warrant Officer),
had suddenly and inexplicably switched to (what we thought of as) the enemy camp!
In a private and rather heated conversation with Bob, he allowed as how the problem was
that we weren’t keeping them clean enough!
"BS." I said, "Bob, you know me better than that!"
"Nope," he said, "the M16s will work if they’re clean!"
Seeing that I had reached a dead end, it was time to try a different approach. Another
Captain/Company Commander and I (he having just as much a case of the "$%#^" over the
"16" as the rest of us) watched as WO Baker utilized his $800 ultra powerful chamber scope
to examine the M16 rifle chambers of a line of troops brought in out of the lines for evaluation
of the condition of their rifles.
This marvelous chamber scope was supposedly powerful enough to make any
imperfections in the chamber look like the surface of the moon. The first man stepped up to
the front of the line and handed over his rifle. Bob sticks the chamber scope in the chamber,
shakes his head and throws the old rifle in a pile that was to grow materially in the next
couple of hours. The Marine was then issued one of the new rifles brought in on the C-130.
Watching the lad with his "brandie, brand new" rifle stride off. Bob Bogard (the other
Company Commander) and I chased him down (out of sight of course). We talked him out of
his rifle, threw it into the dirt, kicked a little over it, picked it up and dusted it carefully off (to
make it look like a "used" rifle). We then waited awhile until a number of folks had gone
through the line and "number 1’s" face had faded from WO Baker's recent memory. We put
the trooper back in line and hid and waited. When (Warrant Officer) Bob stuck his chamber
scope into the new rifle, he again shook his head and threw the new rifle on the pile of
discards! Gotcha! When we pointed out to Bob what we’d done, he went orbital (not a word to
come into general use until ’69 of course)! He accused us of not taking his efforts seriously,
and trying to make him look bad – not hard to do at this point! While we had outraged the
brass, a seed of doubt had been planted, and it grew!
Back at the Command Post, a rather short civilian gentleman of Asian extraction wearing
a Colt Detective Special on his belt, strode over to see me. I recognized him as a Mr. Ito, the
Colt Representative that had flown in with the 400 rifles.
8